


All Night Long Might Sing

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Cuddling, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9134251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Tuuri gets her hands on a volume of Sappho's poetry; Sigrun gets hurt, bored and read-to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Should be easily apparent, but the main part of the fic takes place post page 653. They'll be fine, you hear me? (Or not, in which case this'll be a canon-divergent fic). They'll be fine. Yes. **Happy New Year!**

"Write her poetry! Girls love poetry, don't they?" Emil leaned back in his chair, arms folded behind his head, and beamed a self-satisfied smile at Tuuri. "Or - when we go get books, I should look for a poetry book and bring it back for you. If she likes books, she'll love this! Right out of the Silent World, just for her!" 

Tuuri sighed, and let herself fall face-first into the stack of logs she'd typed up that morning, detailing the last of their journey across Sjælland. "No… no, she _really_ doesn't." 

She was beginning to doubt the wisdom of asking Emil of all people for advice, but she'd thought - with him spending the most time out of all of them with Sigrun, perhaps he'd be considering her as example of all things female, and she would never have to be frank with him about whom she was hoping to win over. 

" _Every_ girl likes poetry," Emil repeated emphatically. Tuuri only just bit back the question just where Emil had learned this, considering how much he was mooning over Lalli, and Lalli only. She only didn't because Sigrun chose that moment to let her cheerful voice cut through the tank. 

"Eeeeemil! Get your butt moving, little Viking! We're going!" 

Emil scrambled to his feet, but before he left the tank, he turned around to give Tuuri a double thumbs-up. Tuuri groaned, and thanked her lucky stars that Emil was as oblivious as he was to the subject of her affections. 

* * *

Something heavy clattered onto the table before Tuuri, and she jerked fully awake and upright in her chair. "Wh-?"

"Now you have a gift for her! No need to thank me!" Tuuri rubbed her bleary eyes and turned to look at Emil, who was covered in soot and smelled ever so slightly of burned hair, but made up for the lack of sparkles and a singed eyebrow with the brightness of his grin before he sauntered off. 

Tuuri took the book. If Emil had gone through the trouble of finding her one, she could at least have a look at it. Even though Sigrun wouldn't like it, it might still be a valuable-enough piece of Old-World literature to be sold later on. 

It certainly looked promising. A woman in a long folded dress, red on a black background, graced the cover. She was standing and holding an instrument that looked a little like a kantele, but the strings extended further and attached to strange horns. _Sapphos Digte_ the title said, and smaller below that, _Oldtidens mest kendte kvindelige digter_. 

Huh. If she was the Old World's best-known female poet, Tuuri wondered why she'd never heard about this… Sappho… before. Curiosity pricked her fingertips when she opened the book and started reading. 

* * *

It was time for dinner, and Mikkel had to call repeatedly before Tuuri could bring herself to close the volume. Her cheeks were burning - whether he'd known what he was doing, for once, or whether it'd been a lucky chance, Emil had brought her something amazing, and she was keeping it. 

Tuuri slipped a sheet of notes she'd taken into the pocket of her uniform, and went to see what sort of sludge Mikkel had cooked up for them that evening. 

The sludge was just as unidentifiable as it usually was; something greyish and fishy with sparse snippets of carrot, but the crew seemed in high spirits, and Sigrun was enthusiastically recounting their day's adventure to Reynir, who was gaping with the spoon in his mouth like he was able to understand more than a word in every ten or so, given the rudimentary grasp of the Norwegian she'd managed to teach him so far. 

"... and then this eelsy troll with the huge claws leaps down at us from up on the stacks and goes all crazy-eyes on me, but my buddy here stopped being a brainiac with the books for a moment and straight-up torched it!" 

"... and then it caught fire and jumped _at my face_ , and if Sigrun hadn't taken its head off I'd be a pile of ash now!" Emil's hand went to his singed eyebrow and rubbed it; he started grinning lopsidedly when Lalli, sitting next to him, peered at his face with a soft _mrrrr_ that drove the colour into Emil's cheeks.

"Damn right, I saved your life there!" 

"That's… great, Sigrun! I wish I could come with you some time. I wouldn't be worried if you were with me, you… " Tuuri slipped the list into her hand and scanned the phrases she'd written down. Even if Sigrun didn't like poetry, she liked being flattered. 

_\- messenger of spring, nightingale with a voice of longing_

No… she scanned further down the list.

_\- far more sweetsounding than a lyre, golder than gold_  
\- _the one with violets in her lap_  
\- _O beautiful O graceful one_  
\- _of all stars the most beautiful_

No. 

"... y-you… o-oh, well, you're so heroic," Tuuri finished lamely. Sigrun's eyes had found the list, and she tilted her head to read it. Tuuri thanked her lucky stars that she'd taken her notes in her scrawliest, most illegible hand, as always when she got excited, but even so she hastily stuffed it back into her pocket where it crumpled under her fist. 

"What's that, Fuzzy?" Sigrun grinned, with a knowing edge to her smile that made Tuuri want to sink into the ground. "N-nothing, nothing important. I just… it's nothing. Just work notes so I don't forget the important stuff. I need the coordinates of the library you went to," she muttered, blushing. 

"Uh-huh, okay," Sigrun said. She shrugged, but did not sound convinced, but thankfully she was more invested in stuffing her mouth full of sludge than prying. Then she yawned widely, and Tuuri decided that none of the compliments she'd written down so excitedly really measured up to Sigrun and her lack of table manners. It felt a little like when she'd shown the contents of her badly-packed bag to Taru. 

She'd have to look again, and try and work up the courage to try and pay Sigrun a compliment that she'd appreciate. Next time she wouldn't fail. 

* * *

The bunk room door rolled clunkily over the metal sheets Tuuri had fixed over the mess of splintered wood and the gaping hole in the bunk room floor. The noise still made her jump, not just because the memory of the troll coming through was still too close to home only a few days later, and she still caught herself being stuck in the memory, with Sigrun charging to the rescue just in time. 

She'd yanked the troll away by its tail just as it'd been about to jump on Tuuri - or more properly on Reynir, who'd thrown himself on top of Tuuri to shield her, pleading with his magic to save them. As far as Tuuri knew, nothing had happened. 

They had luck to thank. Sigrun hadn't been that lucky. 

Before she had managed to finish the struggling troll, it had slashed four parallel claw marks through her uniform and straight across her torso, and after her arm had given her trouble again in the fight, Mikkel had confined her to the bunk and threatened to tie her up if she didn't stay put so the wounds could heal. 

But as luck went - she'd been lucky that it was nothing more than flesh wounds; her quick reflexes had saved her from getting disemboweled. Even so she spent most of her time wrapped in bandages and dozing in Tuuri's bed - she'd tried climbing into her own in spite of Mikkel's command two days after the injury, and Tuuri had found her grumpy and in pain on the floor after four failed attempts and promised to tell no one else after helping her back into the bottom bunk.

Since then Sigrun had been on her best - or at least her least reticent - behaviour, at least as healing went. She was either muttering at whoever was trying to keep her entertained, or she was sleeping. Tuuri hadn't had a chance to spend a lot of time with her; she was spending most of the daylight hours on her back under the tank trying to fix the damage that troll had caused to the wires, hydraulics and pipes that kept the motor, the electronics and the generator connected. It was slow going, but she had managed to get most utilities re-wired that day and thought it finally was getting somewhere. 

Tuuri winced in sympathy when the noise of her entry woke Sigrun, and she struggled to sit upright, cracking her eyes open and scanning the dim room for an intruder until she found Tuuri. At least she no longer tried leaping to action the moment she woke. 

"Hey," Tuuri said, forcing a smile and stepping closer to the bed. "It's time for dinner, if you feel up to eating. I brought you painkillers too, and something to help you sleep. Medic's orders. And good news - I think maybe we won't be stuck here any longer, tomorrow." 

"Thanks, Fuzzy. And good job." Sigrun gave her a lopsided, sleepy smile in return, reaching out with her good right hand for the three pills Tuuri proffered. She took them without water, grimacing when they went down dry. "Ugh, tell Mikkel his meds are at least as bad as his cooking." 

"Okay. But how are you feeling?" Tuuri asked, sitting down on the edge of the bunk. Her fingers clenched around the wooden bowl of soup she was balancing on her knees, despite the heat from its contents. "I-i haven't really - I keep thinking about how you killed that troll to save us, and I haven't really said a thank you for it." 

"How about you knock that off?" Sigrun said, swallowing again to bring the pills down. "I was doing my job, Shortcakes. Protect the helpless ones, fight with honour, get some awesome scars and a story to tell the folks at home. Stay alive if I can help it." 

"I hope you can help it," Tuuri mumbled. She hated being called helpless, but she couldn't really fault Sigrun for thinking that way. She wasn't wrong. 

"What was that?" 

"N-nothing," she said, but a sudden surge of courage made her ball her fists. "No! Not nothing. I just - I don't want you to die." 

Something lit up in Sigrun's eyes. "Thing is… I can afford this sorta thing." Sigrun gestured at her chest and the bandages that covered it under the spare uniform jacket around her shoulder. "The littlest troll scratch, and I'd have to put a bullet in your head, too. No one wants that either. You're my responsibility before you're anything else to me. And I'm your Captain before I'm anything else to you. At least, I shouldn't be anything else first." 

Something clenched unhappily in Tuuri's chest. Her cheeks flamed. 

"So… you knew? Th-that I like you?" She couldn't look at Sigrun no matter how hard she tried, so she stared at the metal sheet under her feet instead, but from the corner of her eye, Tuuri saw Sigrun cracked another tired smile. 

"Hey. You were being pretty obvious, if you know what to look for. And maybe I was looking for it." 

"Maybe?" 

"Maybe I didn't mean to, at first. And maybe I'll regret telling you I'm fond of you, too, when those blasted painkillers don't make me babble like an idiot." Sigrun blinked her eyes a few times as if to underscore her condition, then the smile was back. "Or maybe I won't, if you keep looking at me like that." 

"L-like what?" Something was rushing in Tuuri's ears. Absently, she figured it must be her heartbeat, because her chest felt fit to burst. She didn't mention that she thought the pills would take a while to kick in.

"Like someone's put stars in your eyes. Or maybe someone gave you heartburn, but that could just be Mikkel's food. Last time you looked at me like that was at that dinner, with the love letter you didn't give me. Good thing too, the others would have figured that one out." 

"I-it - it's not actually _that_ bad tonight," Tuuri said, and then wanted to smack her forehead. It was a good thing she hadn't paid Sigrun any compliments at that dinner - Sigrun was right, that would have been so terribly and stupidly obvious that even Emil would have caught the hint. She hadn't thought that plan through at all, and it made her want to shout and laugh at once, but something rooted her to the spot. 

Instead she nudged the bowl at Sigrun. "Lalli went hunting and Mikkel actually put in some effort for once, it almost tastes like chicken soup." She coughed. "And it wasn't a love letter. Not really."

Sigrun's eyebrow rose. "What's in it? And what was it?" 

"Uhhh. Wild chicken? I mean, they probably used to be proper chickens in the Old World. There's plenty of old-time farms around, Lalli says. So - chicken." 

"Huh," Sigrun said with a short laugh, and winced again when it jostled through her chest. "Then I guess I'll have some. Not that it's going to make me any less bored, but before someone else gets on my case of how I need to keep up my strength and I want to rip their head off… give it here, Fuzzy."

Tuuri handed the bowl over. "I'm sorry you're bored. Is there really nothing you can do? I know you hate books, but maybe you could try reading for once? Or practice your Icelandic? Or play cards?" 

"Ew," Sigrun said around a spoonful of soup, in a tone that settled that matter. "And I played cards against Reynir and Emil forever when they were on me-watch. They couldn't play if their lives depended on it; I'd have won even if wasn't as good as I am. And Mikkel cheats, or he wouldn't win all the time." She balanced the bowl on her thighs and held out her hand again. "Give me the other thing, too."

Heat bloomed in Tuuri's cheeks again. "A-are you sure? You'd… you'd probably laugh." _Not probably_ , Tuuri thought. _Definitely._ Her hand snuck into her pocket even so. She'd hidden her list away in her stacks of notes when Mikkel did laundry, and more than once she'd thought of stuffing it into the oven to burn so it'd finally be out of the way and in no danger of falling into anyone else's hands, but she hadn't managed to bring herself to, not when she hadn't had the time to find anything more appropriate to tell Sigrun. It'd have felt like giving up before she'd really started. It'd always found its way back into her pocket.

"If it's not the mean kind of laughter, it's not so bad." Sigrun must have noticed the hand in Tuuri's pocket and made a grab for it; Tuuri twisted away just in time, both from Sigrun's hand and the soup bowl that fell and splattered its contents across the floor. "I could use some laughing." She barely gave her spilled dinner another glance, leaning back into her pillow with a look of relief, so Tuuri didn't push her. They could always clean up later.

"I could read to you instead?" Tuuri suggested. "I made… I made a list of things I'd wanted to call you as a compliment or - a nickname. You always give me such good ones, so Emil brought me back a poetry book and I read through it. It wasn't a very good list." She couldn't help a dejected tone slipping into her voice, but when she'd breathed down some of the tight feeling in her chest that came with it, Sigrun was smiling at her. 

She looked... delighted?

"Poetry is different from reading," she said with the conviction of someone presenting a well-known fact. "We had to learn bits of the Eddas by heart at school, did you know that? They have to for mage-training as well, though they also have to figure out the way it all works for spells and such. And we're doing recitations in the mead hall sometimes, when there's people visiting or when there's nothing else to do in winter. It's like with the old-time Vikings! And Twig uses poetry for those spells of his as well sometimes when we're out and about together; that's nice to listen to on top of useful, even if I have no idea what he's saying. And I guess I can deal with yours if you read it to me and don't make me read it myself."

A moment passed, or maybe more than a moment. "Anytime, when you're done gaping," Sigrun said, and nudged Tuuri's shoulder. "Okay?" 

"Okay," Tuuri heard herself repeat, but when she got on her feet to fetch the book and stepped over the chicken soup puddle, she still felt like she'd taken leave of her senses, and couldn't even tell which of the reasons was foremost on her mind - that Sigrun had figured out liking her and didn't seem to mind, that Sigrun liked poetry, or that Sigrun actually wanted Tuuri to read to her. 

Maybe the painkillers really had addled Sigrun's mind. Maybe the sleeping pill was already working. Maybe Mikkel had done something to the soup Tuuri had eaten. Maybe all of it. Or maybe she was dreaming. 

It didn't feel any different when she returned to the bunk area with the book in hand. It seemed to weigh a ton in her hand, so Tuuri clasped it to her chest instead, wrapping both arms around herself.

Sigrun was still grinning expectantly, and the only flicker of pained irritation came when she shrugged off the jacket she was wearing, tossing it out of the way onto Emil's bed, and scooted forward. 

"Hop in," she said. "If you're gonna read to me, I want to be comfortable, and I bet you make a great pillow! 'sides, you can't lean on me without Mikkel complaining about how I'm not taking care of my scratches enough."

And apparently their reading session was going to involve - by any working definition of the word - cuddling. Her feet seemed to have rooted themselves to the floor, and she had yet to move past the door properly.

"O-okay," Tuuri heard herself say. It was hard to tear her gaze away from Sigrun. She wasn't wearing a shirt (the troll had well and truly shredded hers, and with the bandages Tuuri guessed it must be painful or impractical even if Sigrun even had a spare one left after all the ones Mikkel couldn't mend), so without her jacket on, all that kept Sigrun from sitting there topless were the generous bandages that Mikkel had wrapped around her from her hips to her chest and up to under her arms. That left her arms bare, and Tuuri's gaze swept over the muscles there, and the many scars crisscrossing them, and she sucked in a hasty breath. 

"Like what you see, Fuzzy?" 

Just how often had Tuuri caught herself blushing during the day? She could add another time, however often it'd been. And an extra opportunity for Sigrun's impossible grin. It seemed that with her pain being less of an issue after the pills, she was more or less back to her old self. And now that Sigrun knew, and was apparently taking it in stride -- 

\-- Tuuri nodded mutely and held up the book. 

"Old-World poetry, huh?" Sigrun grinned. "Come on, scoot in then, before it gets too dark to see. Except if you fixed the light already?" 

In answer, because she still couldn't bring herself to talk around the lump in her throat, Tuuri pressed the button by the bunk room door, and watched the fluorescent tubes flicker weakly for a moment before the gods decided to have mercy on her and let them jump to life. 

In bed, Sigrun beamed and whooped. "Poetry _and_ light, that's great! We really got what we asked for with you! Hurry up anyway, before the men come in and laugh at me; right now I can't even punch them properly! You like to read, but I'm not gonna let them catch _me_ near a book!" 

With nothing left to do, Tuuri slipped out of her boots, sidestepped the puddle of chicken soup that was slowly congealing on the floor (Mikkel could clean that up, she thought) and crawled into bed as Sigrun indicated; she was trying very hard not to think of the fact that there was nothing but the gauze bandages between Sigrun's skin and her own clothes as they jostled around to find a comfortable position to sit. Eventually, Tuuri ended up sitting with her back against the pleasantly warm oven, and Sigrun eased herself against the pillow she'd stuffed in between herself and Tuuri, and between Tuuri's outstretched legs; her feet stuck out underneath the blanket and without further ado she shoved them under Emil's pillow. 

Sigrun sighed contentedly. "This works for me. Good with you?" 

"Y-yeah, this is good." It wasn't completely comfortable, but if she were given the choice, Tuuri thought she might never want to move again, unless she got to exchange their position that moment for one involving fewer pillows, bandages and clothes, but if that ever was to happen - she couldn't really wrap her mind around the idea - then not at a time when any of the others could be coming in and interrupting them. 

The only risk now - if it was a risk at all - was Sigrun feeling her heart race. It hammered in her chest hard enough that Tuuri thought it must be shaking the entire tank, even when she opened the book and picked out the first poem to read. 

Sigrun nestled into the pillow a little more, and Tuuri was dimly aware of Sigrun's eyes on her face, bright and content. The hardest thing she'd ever done was to resist leaning down to kiss Sigrun. Instead she began reading.

_"Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,_  
_child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you_  
_do not break with hard pains,_  
_O lady, my heart_

_but come here if ever before_  
_you caught my voice far off_  
_and listening left your father’s_  
_golden house and came,_

 _yoking your car. And fine birds brought you,_  
_quick sparrows over the black earth_  
_whipping their wings down the sky_  
_through midair—"_

"Huh," Sigrun said, a little bewildered. "Birds brought her? Sounds uncomfortable, if she's a proper love goddess she should think about getting a cat chariot." 

Tuuri couldn't help it; she snorted. "Don't you think Freyja would be bothered if someone stole her idea?" 

"Dunno. She's had to put up with so much stuff. And I figure a goddess is pretty busy, so maybe she won't know what's going on in some weird country in the Silent World that no one knows about any longer." 

"Greece," Tuuri said. "It's way down in the south, but Mikkel says these gods weren't worshipped for thousands of years, though maybe they are again now, if there's any people left."

Sigrun grinned, reaching up to fuzz Tuuri's hair; Tuuri leaned into her touch and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sensation of Sigrun's palm cupping her cheek and her fingers through her hair. "If they're not as far away as the other side of the world, maybe we can do another mission there. Bring some cats to say hi, help them stomp some grosslings. If you get the tank running again, that is." 

"I will!" Tuuri said hastily. Her eyes flew open. "Tomorrow! And you need to get better!" 

"Relax, I'm just teasing you. You're doing good work, but right now I think you should read me some more of that poetry." 

"Do… do you like it?"

"Mm. I haven't decided yet, and it'd be better in Norwegian, but it's not terrible."

Tuuri smiled.

_"they arrived. But you, O blessed one,_  
_smiled in your deathless face_  
_and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why_  
_(now again) I am calling out_

_and what I want to happen most of all_  
_in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)_  
_to lead you back into her love? Who, O_  
_Sappho, is wronging you?"_

"Yeah, who did?" Sigrun murmured. It seemed the medication must be doing its work; she sounded so sleepy that Tuuri hazarded a look away from her book, and smiled to see that in just a few lines, Sigrun's eyes had slipped half-lidded and were about to shut. "Wronging's a bad idea..."

"I don't know - but - but if you're a mage like this Sappho and have a goddess on your side, I think it's going to go alright for her," Tuuri replied in a low voice. Sigrun muttered something in response, but in between her sleepiness and how accented her Norwegian could be, Tuuri didn't catch what she said. And in between the warmth of the oven behind her and Sigrun slumbering off half on top of her as a warm weight pressing Tuuri down into the bed, she couldn't help a yawn of her own. 

They hadn't even finished the first poem and she still hadn't found a proper nickname for Sigrun, but it'd been a long day with unexpected excitement, and there'd be plenty of time to read more poetry. She closed the book, tucked it under her pillow, and bent to breathe a kiss, as light as possible, across the corner of Sigrun's mouth. 

Sigrun's face twitched into a muted, sleepy smile that sent warmth all through her. Tuuri surrendered to that, to the weariness pulling at her, and the heartbeat that had calmed into a steady, soothing rhythm. 

She closed her eyes, slipped her hand into Sigrun's, and let sleep come.

**Author's Note:**

> The title, as well as all quotes and excerpts are from Anne Carson's translation, _If Not, Winter_. Many thanks to Kiraly for all her support and cheerleading, and to Yuu for his beta. ♥
> 
> Now with glorious art [by Kiraly](http://worldsentwined.tumblr.com/post/155221686264/they-arrived-but-you-o-blessed-one-smiled-in) and [by Rabbit](http://littleforestmageguy.tumblr.com/post/155272786152/sigrun-grinned-reaching-up-to-fuzz-tuuris-hair). Thank you! :D


End file.
